Doubt
by CraicHazzard
Summary: Even when a mission goes horribly wrong and the life of someone dear to you hangs by a thread, there are some people you just can't trust. Bad doctors, guns, and bad doctors with guns. And Reno/Cloud! Rewritten, hoo-hoo!
1. Interrogation

**Doubt**

**Stop** **right there, criminal scum!** – Ha, made you look. This story has been rewritten. I felt like updating it, so I reread it… it was bad and I felt bad. Now it is slightly less bad. It's still not a musical though. Hopefully you won't get brain damage from reading it… oops, was that a spoiler?

Disclaimer – I own nothing except the hospital staff and Albie.

xxx

**Chapter 1 – Interrogation**

"And you say you found this man _where_?" the doctor repeated, staring over his thick-rimmed glasses at the bedraggled-looking man he had dragged into his office. The stout man stared right back at his interrogator, twisting his greasy beard around his fingers.

"I told you twice already," he groused, and leaned forwards over the desk. "I hauled him out from that building what collapsed. The one what used to be a department store 'fore it closed down." His voice sounded rather like gravel being poured from the back of a truck. It irritated the doctor immensely.

"I _see_." The doctor picked up his pen from its holder and wrote something down on an apricot-coloured slip in the kind of precise blue handwriting that only comes to those with years of experience filling out forms. The strange man watched him closely. "And there have been no other reports of people injured by this collapse _because_?"

"'Ave I gotta repeat everything I say twice, doctor…" there was a pause as the man squinted at the name-card clipped to the pocket of the doctor's pristine white lab-coat. "…Glyde?"

"It's _Clyde_," Doctor Cornelius Clyde, whose name badge was a constant source of frustration for him and the other hospital staff, sighed impatiently. "I'm merely trying to make sense of this _story_ of yours." He stared down his nose at the shorter man, his eyes glinting dangerously behind his glasses.

"Whatever you say, doc. There's hardly anyone living 'round there, see? An' there sure as hell ain't nobody crazy enough to go digging up strangers out of a bunch of rubble and dragging them all the way _here_." The stout man sneered a little as he glanced around the office, with its stark white walls and spotless furniture. In fact, it had crossed Doctor Clyde's mind whether or not to offer a seat to the man, who was quite possibly the filthiest creature he had ever had the displeasure of meeting. As it turned out, he needn't have worried – the man had helped himself to the comfiest chair in the room and stuck his smelly feet right on the edge of his desk.

"Except for you." This wasn't really a question, as the mysterious, dirty stranger had actually brought an unconscious man (who he adamantly claimed to be a total stranger) into Central Edge Emergency Department, and then proceeded to spin this unlikely story to anyone who would listen. Until Doctor Clyde had intervened, that is.

"Actually, I might not be as crazy as you think, doc. My instincts tell me there might be some kind of _reward _for rescuing him, see?" Clyde narrowed his eyes and was about to demand an explanation, but a shrill cry filled the air before he could speak.

"_Doctor Clyde!_" a young woman burst through the door, lab coat flapping wildly and her pony-tail bobbing up and down as she spoke. "Doctor Clyde, it's true! The team you sent out has returned, and the building _has_ been demolished! Civilians in the area said they heard a loud rumbling noise and felt the ground shake." There was an expectant pause.

"Thank you, Doctor Stoke." Clyde waved his hand to dismiss the younger woman, and turned back to the man sitting at his desk.

"It looks like you were telling the truth, er… what did you say your name was?"

"Albie." A wide, yellow-toothed leer spread across the man's face, and the doctor had to force himself not to shudder.

"_Indeed_."

"Doctor Clyde?" The woman had returned, knocking politely on the door this time.

"What is it _now_, Leila?" Clyde sniped, glancing past 'Albie' at the source of his distraction.

"We've identified the patient as an employee of Shinra Electric Power Company… a member of the TURKs, actually," came the meek reply. Albie smirked knowingly at the man on the other side of the desk, who currently appeared to having a miniature aneurism of some kind. "We… er… also retrieved his cell phone from the building…" Doctor Stoke added hesitantly, and then took a hasty step back as her superior jumped to his feet, nearly knocking his chair over backwards in the process.

"Well? Don't just _stand _there, fool!" he bawled at the poor woman, who flinched and began to back away through the office door. "Call the first contact stored on that phone and let them know what's happened!" he made a shooing motion with her hand and slammed the door as soon as she disappeared. When she was gone, he groaned tiredly and ran a hand through his greying hair, but pointed a lean finger at Albie when he tried to get up. "_Siddown_," he snarled. "I'm not finished with you yet."

Albie could only grimace and lower himself back into the chair he had been sitting in for the last half-hour, as the doctor twisted the lock on his office door closed with a faint '_click_'.

"Now," Cornelius Clyde smiled the kind of smile a crocodile might give to its dinner. "Tell me about these... _instincts_ of yours."

xxx

Back at Shinra Headquarters, a different kind of interrogation was underway.

"You were the last person to see him, Reno. What happened?" Reno shifted restlessly under his superior's gaze. He was a mess, and he knew it. His TURK uniform was covered in grime and even torn and spotted with blood in places, and his flame-red hair stuck up at even crazier angles than it usually did. Tseng, who had had the presence of mind to clean himself up a little upon their return from the unmitigated disaster that had been their latest mission, looked practically spotless in comparison, although his face was grazed and his uniform had not fared much better than Reno's.

"Nothing that you don't already know, yo. We were trapped by those bastards' gunfire until you broke that window, and then we just ran for it." Tseng scowled, clearly unimpressed by this.

"That doesn't explain how Rude managed to completely disappear between then and now," he replied tersely.

"Well, I was almost on the roof, and I looked back to check up on him, and he just… _wasn't there_." Reno's voice wavered slightly, but Tseng pretended not to notice. "So then I went back down to look for him, but the gunfire started up again… then the pillars started cracking…" He trailed off with a helpless shrug.

"A self destruct system." Tseng finished stonily. However, seeing the pained look in the younger man's eyes, his expression softened somewhat. "You were right to escape when you did. If you'd gone back–"

"I know, I know. I'd have ended up just like Rude," Reno interrupted. "That fucking _idiot._" He turned and aimed a bitter kick at the wall behind him, not hard enough to break anything – he wasn't that stupid, yo – but just hard enough to alleviate the knot forming in the pit of his stomach. And maybe hurt just a little. "What the hell was he doing, going back to hold 'em off like that? That's the sort of crazy shit_ I_ would do… are you going to get that?" The last comment was directed at Tseng, who had apparently been too deep in thought to realise that his cell phone was ringing. Reno fell quiet as the Wutaian man flipped the phone open, listening intently in case it was Rude calling. No such luck.

"Sir, I just got a call from Rude's cell phone," he heard a tinny version of Elena's voice cut through the night air.

"Where is he? Is he ok?" Reno practically yelled in Tseng's ear. The older man frowned and turned away from the antsy redhead in order to let Elena continue.

"He's in the hospital. The woman who called me said that he's in critical condition, with severe head injuries. A civilian brought him in about half an hour ago."

"This is bad," Tseng growled, but Reno butted in again.

"Which hospital?" He managed to say at a normal volume from around gritted teeth.

"Central Edge Emergency Department, but aren't you–" Elena's warning went unheeded – Reno had already taken off in direction of the helicopter, and Tseng was too busy shouting after him to hear her words.

"Reno, stop! You're in no condition to fly that on your own!" Reno gave no indication that he'd heard Tseng's words. "Get back here!" Tseng had no choice but to sprint after him. "That's an _order_!" he groaned a curse as Reno disappeared into the cockpit and pulled the door shut after him. A moment later, the sound of engines firing up filled the air, and Tseng was forced to a standstill as dust and grit was blown into his face. Shielding his eyes, he lifted his cell phone back to his ear. He had to shout over the noise of the chopper's engines to make himself heard. "Elena, go back to the other helicopter and wait for me there. Reno's already taken this one." Elena made an exasperated noise on the other end.

"Didn't I just tell him not to do anything rash?" she complained. "Ok, I'll see you in a minute. Over and out." The phone beeped to signal that she had hung up, and Tseng began to punch in a new number – Rufus Shinra's.

Rufus answered on the second ring. "Have you located Rude yet?" he demanded immediately. His tone suggested that he blamed Tseng for the disaster – Tseng bristled with indignation at this, but pushed the feeling aside.

"He's at Central Edge Hospital. A civilian brought him in." There came neither a sigh of relief or a groan of annoyance at this, but Tseng had expected as much. Only –

"What's his status?"

"Critical." Tseng eyed the helicopter Reno had just 'appropriated', now just a speck in the distance. "Reno took one of the choppers, and has gone to see him."

"That idiot." Rufus groaned. "He should be getting his wounds treated, not gallivanting off on his own."

"I agree. At least he'll be fairly safe at the hospital."

"Not if he passes out on the way there. Retrieve him immediately."

"Understood. I'll call you again once we've seen how Rude is doing." The phone beeped again as the president hung up.

xxx

No sooner had he landed the helicopter, Reno was sprinting as fast as his legs, wobbly with fatigue and still sore from the mission, could carry him towards the hospital entrance. Ignoring the burning in his chest and the groaning of his muscles as they protested against the renewed abuse, he half-pushed, half-fell through the glass doors and staggered over to the receptionist's desk, gasping for air and ignoring the looks of alarm the other patients were giving him.

"I'm here for Rude, yo," he managed, before he doubled over as a ripple of pain ran through him. The receptionist just stared at him for a moment, hr heavily made-up face looking more like plastic under the bright ceiling lights.

"Er… you'll have to give me a full name, sir." She replied, suspiciously eyeing the blood stains on his clothes. Reno just growled impatiently, incredulous as to how she could not know who he was talking about. This _wa_s the hospital… _right? _

"Rude!" he insisted at the top of his voice, still panting. Bald guy. With a goatee." The room span sickeningly around him, and his hands flew out to steady himself on the closest available surface – which just happened to be the receptionist's desk. He stumbled, dislodging a stack of folders and sending them to the tiled floor with a loud '_kafflunk_'. A chorus of muffled gasps, and at least one whispered _'is he drunk?'_ filled the room as the nearby patients craned their necks to see what was going on.

"Hey! Are you alright sir?" the receptionist jumped to her feet, but Reno pushed her arm away.

"I'll be fine, dammit, I just want to see _Rude_!" Reno shook his head to get rid of the fuzziness that had crept in around the edge of his vision, but groaned and stumbled again as the room lurched violently.

"Are you his next of kin?" the woman was by his side now; he could smell her cheap perfume and stale tobacco over the smell of disinfectant that permeated the room. Again, he batted her hand away.

"I'm the closest thing he has, dammit, _let me see him_!" he growled again, not really caring anymore whether he was lucid enough for anyone to understand him.

"Absolutely not! You need medical attention," the receptionist decided. Reno tried to protest, but the words did not come quick enough, for she had already yelled out to the nearby uniformed men guarding the hospital tried to run, but a manicured hand shot out and gripped his pony-tail with surprising strength – or perhaps his body was just too tired to put up much of a fight; it was hard to tell. "_Security!_ Get this man to a doctor and have him get those injuries checked. I don't have time for this."

A moment later, Reno found himself being bundled through a different pair of glass doors by a pair of men who were apparently used to kicking babbling strangers out of the emergency room. All he could do was protest incoherently as they half-dragged, half-carried him along until they finally dumped him unceremoniously on the floor in front of a young woman in a lab coat, and then left again.

The woman leaned over him, frowning as he groaned and tried to sit up, and placing a cool hand against his forehead to keep him still.

"Hey, don't try to move." She was saying. "Are you injured?" Reno vaguely felt his jacket being removed, but couldn't quite remember where he was anymore. The blonde woman came back into view, and he grinned lazily as his imagination filled in the sudden gap in his memory.

"Heh, Cloud, you look good as a girl, yo," he drawled, undeterred by the confused expression that worked its way onto her face as she turned away again.

Doctor Leila Stoke yelped as the redhead reached out to grope her backside, and spun around to deliver a stinging slap to the man's face that echoed around the room. She sighed as he just looked up at her in bewilderment, his cheek turning a rather nasty shade of pink.

"Why does this always happen to me?" she groaned to herself. "At least you don't seem to be in danger of dying anytime soon," she informed the stranger splayed out on the cold floor, and went over to the drug cabinet in search of a potion. "Maybe when you've come back to your senses we can check you up properly."

xxx

A/N – Christ, in hindsight, a musical would have been easier.

Hey, can you imagine how frustrating this story would be if telephones hadn't been invented?


	2. Phone Calls

**Doubt**

Cloud actually appears in this chapter. I know. Don't believe me? Scroll down a bit.

Disclaimer – I own nothing except the hospital staff and Albie the scuzz-ball.

**Chapter 2 – Phone Calls**

Cloud was sleeping peacefully, enveloped by warm blankets, a soft smile gracing his features as he slumbered. His bubble of contentment vanished as his cell phone suddenly buzzed, the vibrations sending it skittering across his bedside table. He groaned and pulled his duvet over his head. The phone buzzed again, this time falling off the edge of the table and landing on the ground with a dull 'thud'. It lay on the carpet like an accusation, vibrating every now and then to remind him that it was still there.  
A pale hand emerged from the cocoon of blankets, fingertips grazing the carpet before they finally closed around the offending piece of technology and flipped it open, illuminating the room with a faint blue glow. Cloud withdrew his hand, deciding that since he was awake he may as well answer it, and if it was Reno, there would be hell to pay. He lifted his phone to his ear and grunted to indicate that he was there.

"Cloud Strife?" the voice on the other end was strangely familiar, but Cloud's sleep-addled brain couldn't quite place it. The man's tone was rather serious though, and he rubbed his eyes with his free hand as he tried to form a coherent, even mildly intelligent sentence.

"Speaking," he finally managed, stifling a yawn. There was a brief pause.

"This is Rufus Shinra." The voice said, in the tone one would use to remind a particularly stupid person that the planet was round and Mako did disturbing things to you. Cloud blinked and pushed himself up into a relatively upright position.

"Oh. How did you get my number?" was all he said, aware that his lack of enthusiasm would undoubtedly offend the president, but still far too groggy to care. He highly doubted that he would care when he had properly woken up, too. He rolled his eyes as he glanced at the clock – it read 2.47. If Rufus was surprised by Cloud's reaction, he did not comment on it. Instead, he ignored the delivery boy's question and instead got right to the point.

"There's been an accident in downtown Edge." Cloud's head snapped back so hard he nearly bashed it against his bedroom wall.

"Reno?" he forced out, his mouth suddenly dry as he felt his blood turn to ice. He swallowed hard.

"Reno is fine, but his partner, Rude, has been taken to Edge Central Hospital with severe injuries," Rufus replied, as if he were merely a news anchor reading a story. "Reno is already on his way there now." Cloud began fumbling around in the dark for his clothes, still too groggy to see much further than the phone in his hand allowed, even with his Mako-enhanced vision. There was a long pause as Rufus listened to the other man stumbling around.

"Why did you call me?" he heard Cloud pant, his voice slightly distant. Evidently he'd put the phone down in order to dress himself properly.

"I'm aware that you and Reno are…close." The scuffling from Cloud's end only became more urgent, only confirming this last remark. Rufus cleared his throat. "Despite what many people may believe, I _do _care about the well-being of my employees. Especially–" he cut himself off, and even half-in, half-out of his shirt, Cloud arched an eyebrow. "…the TURKs included," the president finished, a lot less pompously. Actually, Cloud thought to himself, the man sounded tired.

"I'm on my way," he assured Rufus, and hung up so he could finish throwing on the rest of his clothes.

xxx

Outside Central Edge Hospital's Emergency Department, the lone Shinra helicopter on the helipad was soon joined by its twin as Tseng and Elena finally arrived at their destination. They both sighed with relief when they saw that they were not the first to arrive. Elena, dressed in a fresh uniform and currently in the process of smoothing her hair down, glanced at her superior's reflection in her mirror.

"At least we know Reno's safe."

"I'm going to kill him," Tseng fumed, and as soon as he'd switched off the engines, kicked his door open. Elena wordlessly did the same.

A light rain had begun to fall outside, wetting the tarmac and making it shine in the dazzling floodlights overhead as the two TURKs made their way towards the hospital entrance. The waiting room, by comparison, was warm and lit comfortably, but there was no sign of Reno anywhere. The receptionist glared at them coldly when she caught sight of their uniforms.

"I suppose you're here to see 'Rude' too," she remarked coolly, much to their surprise. "I'll tell you the same as I told Red; if you're not his next of kin or his spouse – which I _highly_ doubt –" she said, glaring at Tseng in particular during the last part, "–you're not getting past me." She folded her arms over her blouse, as if daring either one of them to object.

"She's not kidding, yo," Reno appeared from behind a vending machine, much to the receptionist's annoyance. "What took you so long, anyway?"

"What are you doing back in here?" the receptionist snapped. "Security, get him back to his room." Tseng calmly stepped forward and retrieved his ID card from his pocket, complete with the Shinra logo embellished on the front.

"He's with us," he said, holding up the card for the woman to inspect with a grim smile that said '_the TURKs go where we please, thank-you-very-much._' "We're here on behalf of President Shinra." The woman's expression of distaste soon turned to one of cold acknowledgement.

"Well… fine," she sighed reluctantly. "But _not_ you," she snapped as she spied Reno trying to sneak past her by sandwiching himself between Elena and Tseng. "Get back to your room. _NOW_."

"Very well. Reno, stay here." With the security guards advancing towards him, Reno could only glare at his superior in outrage.

"But-!"

"You blatantly ignored an order and stole a company helicopter, you dolt. You're lucky I'm not sending straight back to headquarters with Elena," Tseng hissed in his ear. "Now shut up and do as you're told, for once." He turned on his heel and stalked away, followed closely by Elena, but not before she shot Reno a sympathetic smile. Reno returned the glance with a poisonous glare as he found himself at the mercy of the security guards once more.

xxx

Cloud reached the hospital in record time – he'd made the trip before on a delivery, but never in the middle of the night, nor in the rain. As his fenrir screeched to a halt directly outside the entrance – this was no time to spend hours looking for a parking space – he caught sight of the two Shinra choppers left on the helipad. Apparently the TURKs shared his sentiments.

He looked around the Emergency room as he entered, trying not to breathe in the smell of bleach and sick people, and also to ignore the patients, who were watching him curiously simply out of having nothing better to do. Besides, it was obvious that he was neither hurt nor sick, and that fenrir was _loud_.

The receptionist stopped tapping her immaculately polished fingernails against her keyboard in mid-tap at his approach, for just long enough to glance up at him disinterestedly.

"Can I help you sir?" she sighed in monotone, and a puff of cigarette-flavoured air wafted into Cloud's face.

"I'm looking for–" Cloud never got to finish his sentence, as he was interrupted by a very familiar voice.

"Cloud?" the blonde man glanced around for a moment until he found what he was looking for; crouched behind a couch occupied by an old lady who looked rather bewildered with the attention suddenly being directed her way.

To say that Reno looked terrible would have been an understatement. His eyes were rimmed by dark circles – although Cloud probably had those himself, since he'd been woken up – and there was a large purple bruise forming on his cheek. Somehow he'd even lost his jacket. Then there was the blood all over his clothes… However, before either man could say anything else in the way of greeting, the receptionist cut in.

"What are you doing _now_?" She snapped. Her tone and furrowed brow suggested that Reno was not her favourite person at the moment.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Reno straightened up – not that he had much choice now that he'd blown his cover.

"Trying to get me fired, that's what!" Cloud could only watch helplessly as Reno and the makeup-clad woman each drew themselves up to their full height, reminding him of a scene before a gunfight he'd seen in an old western movie. Had the situation been less serious, he might even have burst out laughing.

"What's your problem anyway, yo?" Reno was complaining. "I've been fine ever since Leila healed me."

"That's Doctor Stoke to _you_; now get back to your room and _stay_ there, or I'll have her knock you out cold." The woman made a syringe-like motion with her hands. "Though it looks like she already gave it a try," she added cruelly, as Reno was bundled back through the corridor, his muffled protests ignored by the security guards manhandling him.

"Can I go with him?" Cloud asked hurriedly. To his surprise, the receptionist nodded wearily as she sank back into her chair.

"Normally we wouldn't allow it, but the man needs to rest before we can let him leave. Can you get him to stay put for a while?"

"I'll try," Cloud shrugged, and followed Reno through the corridor he had just disappeared through as she turned back to her computer. On the way he passed the guards, who remained silent and averted their gaze at his approach.

Reno was sitting on a hospital bed with his back to the doorway in an otherwise unoccupied room, staring miserably out at the rain when Cloud finally found him. The lights were all off – apparently neither he, the guards or any of the nurses had bothered to flick them on, so Cloud left them and went to join the smaller man in the dark, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"How'd you know I was here?" Reno shuffled over on the bed so that Cloud could sit down beside him.

"Your boss called me," Cloud admitted, and for a moment he thought he heard Reno snort, but when he looked, the man looked as tense as ever. He fingered one of the bloody holes in Reno's shirt sleeve anxiously. "You've been hurt." He pointed out unnecessarily, but Reno just waved the comment away, casting his gaze down to the smooth neutral-coloured tiles of the floor that blended in with the rest of the bleak, colourless room.

"It's just a scratch. The doctor pretty much shoved a potion down my throat, and everything healed up…" he scoffed a little. "You know, I always wondered why you can just pump some people full of potion, or throw a couple of phoenix down over them, and they'll just get right back up again… but other people never get better." Cloud shook his head slightly.

"Some injuries can't be healed with items or magic," he murmured, wincing as an all-too-familiar slow burn spread through his chest. "What happened?" he changed the subject, and brought his hands up to Reno's dirty hair, his fingers threading through wild spikes. Reno's jaw moved from side to side thoughtfully as he considered the question.

"You know I can't tell you," he said eventually, a reproachful edge to his voice.

"Yeah, I know." Cloud made no move to let go of him.

"Something went wrong, yo. Something happened back there, and Rude tried to buy me some time…" Reno leaned back and hugged his knees to his chest, his brow furrowed. "…and then the building – we were in a building–" Cloud nodded to show he understood. "–and then the building started crumbling." He shook his head restlessly and slid off the bed, too fretful to stay in one position for long. "I left him behind," he muttered eventually.

"If you stayed, you'd have ended up the same." Cloud repeated the words Tseng had said less than an hour before.

"He's my partner! My best friend." Reno was pacing now, and casting long, twisted shadows over the walls in the light from the corridor. "I can't believe I just _left_ him."

"_Reno_."

"_Dammit!_" Reno's cheeks flushed with embarrassment as the tears that had been forming in his eyes overflowed of their own accord, trickling silently down his face. He blinked them away and hastily scrubbed at his face with his shirt sleeve, but it was too late to hide them from the man sitting on the bed. Cloud stood, and a moment later he had pulled Reno into his arms, wrapping one around his head protectively while his other hand rubbed small, soothing circles into the lithe man's back. Reno stiffened instinctively, but the weight of his guilt soon had him leaning into the warm arms encircling him.

"This is all my fault, yo." He choked out, his voice muffled against Cloud's shoulder and almost unrecognisable with grief. Cloud just rested his cheek against Reno's forehead as he leaned to murmur in his ear.

"There's nothing you could have done." He felt Reno's fingers twist themselves desperately into the fabric of his vest. "Do you hear me? This. _Isn't_. Your. Fault." A chill seemed to hang in the air now, though the windows were tightly shut. When he finally tilted Reno's head back to look him in the eyes, he couldn't help but cringe inwardly as he took in the man's sore red eyelids and tear-streaked, pale face. It suddenly occurred to him that he'd never seen the redhead so much as depressed before, let alone wracked with anguish and guilt.

The helplessness that had driven Cloud away from his family and friends less than a year ago suddenly came flooding back, as he stood there, his boyfriend's pale skin almost luminous in the odd half-light filtering through the windows. The twin tattoos on his cheekbones looked like a pair of dark, painful gashes under his eyes, and the realisation sent a searing pain through him, somehow worse than any cut or stab wound he'd received, perhaps even worse than the geostigma had been. This pain came from neither limb nor weapon. Just as he'd just told Reno, there were some things that a potion or cure materia could not heal.

"It's going to be ok." He said, then mentally kicked himself. What the hell did he know, anyway? Since when was he the one with all the answers? He half expected Reno to shake his head and storm away in disgust – he even flinched in preparation for a punch in the face, but the anticipated blow never came. When he opened his eyes again, the anguish on Reno's face was like a kick in the guts.

"What if he's not?" Reno's voice sounded unnaturally small coming from the usually larger-than-life man, and all Cloud could do was hold him tightly and reassure him over and over, wishing he could believe it all himself.

A soft noise, like high-heels on linoleum made the blonde man look up to find Elena and Tseng regarding them solemnly from the doorway, almost silhouetted by the bright artificial lights of the corridor. If they were surprised to see Cloud there with his arms around their comrade, they didn't show it.

"How is he?" he asked quietly, feeling Reno stiffen anxiously in his arms, as he too turned to face his colleagues. It was only when Tseng looked away to avoid his gaze in an uncharacteristic display of awkwardness they saw the barely-dried tears on Elena's face. Reno turned suddenly a shade even paler, and shook his head furiously.

"He's not… no, fuck, he's not. He can't be dead." His voice rose into a hoarse yell that echoed off the bleak walls. "Fuck, 'Lena! _Tell me he's not dead_!" Elena clamped her hands over her mouth, her brown eyes wide. Even Tseng looked appalled.

"No, no, it's nothing like that," he cut in hastily, before Reno could say anything else. "But he's in a very unstable condition–"

"–_WHAT DOES THAT MEAN_?" Reno interrupted, flailing white-knuckled fists helplessly, like a child.

"It means," Elena practically whispered, "that he might not last much longer. He hasn't woken up since he was first brought here, and it's been so long since the injury happened, the chances that he'll survive the operation on his brain are slim." She swallowed the lump rising in her throat before continuing, trying desperately not to look away from Reno's tormented gaze. "Even if he does make it through the operation, there's no guarantee that he'll fully recover." Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, but Reno had gone as still as a marble statue.

"…what does that mean?" his voice was barely audible now, his anger having ebbed away as quickly as it had flared up. There was no doubt that everyone else had heard his voice waver ominously. Elena tried to protest weakly, but the redhead held up his hand with a calmness that would have better befitted Tseng. "Just tell me, 'Lena. Please." He begged. He looked suddenly very frail, Cloud thought, as though he had lost a few pounds in the last hour from pacing up and down in the darkened room, and might shatter at any moment.

"The doctor says he'll probably have brain damage," Elena admitted finally, unable to look her superior in the eyes any longer, her tears flowing freely down her face, much like Reno's had scarce moments ago. "It's impossible to tell yet whether the damage is severe or only minor…" All the remaining life seemed to drain from the tattooed man, and Cloud had to practically dive forwards to catch him before he hit the ground. "Oh god, Reno. I'm so sorry," Elena sobbed, barely even noticing the hand that Tseng placed on her shoulder.

"We should leave." Tseng muttered in her ear, and a moment later they were gone, leaving Cloud and Reno alone in the otherwise empty room once more. Reno allowed his boyfriend to manoeuvre him over to the nearest bed, and collapsed onto it, shaking furiously. Outside, the rain splattered against the window, drowning out Reno's feeble curses and Cloud's attempts to console him.

And somewhere within the depths of the building lay Rude, oblivious to his best friend's anguish and lifelessly awaiting the operation that would either save his life, or end it.

xxx

A/N – you know that little voice that tells you not to do stupid things, like writing something that is practically a medical drama when you haven't the foggiest idea about how hospitals work? Mine buggered off ages ago.


	3. Betrayal and Blackmail

**Doubt**

A/N - Yeah, this story has gay men in it. How original. It's not like ninety percent of all fan fiction is slash or anything. Geez.

Disclaimer – This might be a shocker for some of you. In fact, you might want to sit down for this. Are you sitting down? Ok? Ok. I don't own Final Fantasy VII.

I know! Your whole life is a lie.

xxx

**Chapter 3 – Of Betrayal and Blackmail**

Doctor Clyde smirked at his reflection in his office windows, the image clearer than usual since it was the middle of the night, and the room was lit up brightly against the night sky outside. As his gaze dropped to the black cellphone in his hand, a grim smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Had there been anyone else around to see him, they might have said the usually charismatic doctor looked downright sinister.  
It had been ridiculously easy to take the phone from the arrogant Wutaian man that had stormed into his office, he thought with satisfaction. Never one to let an opportunity for profit pass him by, while both TURKs were distracted – more specifically, when the noisy one was occupied with consoling the tearful one – he had managed to quite simply pluck the phone from the man's pocket. Clyde gave a soft, disdainful snort. And the TURKs called themselves masters of deception.

However, that was the easy part, and profit never came without effort, as the doctor knew more than anyone.

Clyde flicked open the phone and was immediately confronted with a request to unlock the keypad, along with a rather convenient animated diagram showing him how to do it. He rolled his eyes and followed the instructions. If even the TURKs could not be bothered to set a password for their phones, he decided, they _deserved_ to have their secret contacts and such rifled through.

He located the number for Rufus Shinra's personal office with relative ease, and held the phone to his ear as the dialling tone chirped away in the background. He barely had time to take a deep breath in preparation before his call was answered.

"Tseng, I trust you have news of Rude's condition?" Rufus' voice blustered through the receiver.

"Rufus Shinra, I presume?" Clyde's lip curled for a moment as he imagined the look on the president's face when he realized he was not talking to one of his beloved TURKs after all.

Rufus, on the other hand, did not sound impressed.

"…Who is this?"

"My name is Doctor Cornelius Clyde; I work at Central Edge Emergency Department," the older man informed him calmly. "In precisely twelve minutes I am to perform an emergency brain surgery on this 'Rude' of yours." Back in his office, Rufus' eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"I don't like your tone, Doctor Clyde."

"I'm sorry to hear that." The smirk on the doctor's face was evident in his voice, and the president knew that his initial dislike of the man had been well-placed.

"Why don't we skip the formalities? Tell me why you're using my employee's cell phone to call me," he demanded, his tone clipped and the scowl never leaving his face.

"Gladly. The TURKs are a very… important branch of the Shinra Company, am I right? After all, wherever you go, it's a given that they won't be far behind. Why, they're practically an extra left hand. If I were in your position, I might even go so far as to consider them my_ friends_. Or perhaps you're too_ important_ for friends?" There was a stunned silence from Rufus' end of the line. How did this supercilious, sneering man know so much about the inner workings of his company?

"You talk far too much, Doctor. The affairs of the TURKs are none of your concern," he replied eventually. "Now hurry this up. I'm a very busy man."

"Gladly. I want eight hundred thousand Gil to ensure the surgery goes well," Clyde said bluntly, then fumbled to hold the phone away from his ear as the president's incredulous laughter burst through the receiver.

"Do you honestly think you'll get anywhere by blackmailing me?" he chuckled, his tone icier than the northern crater. "I could have you fired from that hospital in less than a week."

"Yes, yes, a fact I'm well aware of." Clyde replied boredly. "I think you should know that I'm the best surgeon in Edge, and your man's only hope of surviving his operation. You know, brain operations are… risky. I'd hate for something to go wrong." he followed his ominous words with an insincere sigh. Rufus bristled.

"You're despicable," he spat, and the doctor shrugged, although he knew the president could not see him.

"It takes one to know one, Mr. Shinra." He glanced at his watch. "I now have six minutes before surgery begins, so kindly make up your mind."

"And if I refuse to pay you?"

"I think you know what will happen if we go down that road. I'd hate to have to tell that lovely blonde girl that her colleague didn't survive his operation. What was her name? Elaine?" there was a brief pause, during which he tapped his fingers against the windowsill impatiently. "_Really_, sir. Surely you of all people can spare a mere eight hundred thousand for a man's life. Five minutes." The seconds ticked by, stretching the cold silence out into an eternity. If he listened closely enough, he could almost hear the president grinding his teeth, he thought with satisfaction.

"Rude will survive this operation," Rufus Shinra spat finally, his voice shaking with immeasurable rage. "Or I will personally ensure that you never practice medicine again. I'll have the money delivered tonight."

Doctor Clyde had just enough time to drawl "A _pleasure _doing business with you, sir," before the blond man slammed the phone down. "Bastard," he muttered, and flipped Tseng's cell phone shut, glancing at the glowing digits on the screen on its lid.

Four minutes until he had to be in surgery.

Clyde flicked back the lock on his office door and pulled it ajar. Directly outside, the two TURKs that had visited him before were squabbling loudly. He inwardly smirked. With the noise they were making, there was no way they could have heard his exchange with their employer.

"Where was the last time you saw it?" Elena was saying, watching as Tseng patted his pockets.

"Don't patronize me, Elena," he warned her, wearing a glare that could have frozen hell over.

"Looking for this?" Clyde held up the Wutaian man's cell phone with a pleasant smile, the nasty tone that had filled his voice melting away with ease now that he was no longer alone. Elena smiled with relief. Tseng, however, did not look happy at all.

"How did you get my phone?" he demanded, ignoring Elena's raised eyebrows and disapproving frown.

"I believe you dropped it on your way out." Clyde smiled and handed the phone over. "I'm afraid I can't stay – surgery starts in a few minutes." He nodded curtly to Tseng, who was still watching him with narrowed eyes, and then to Elena who shrugged apologetically. A moment later the doctor was gone, his sharp footsteps echoing off the bare walls of the corridor. The pair turned to one another.

"I don't trust that man." Tseng remarked, but was quickly 'shushed' by his smaller companion.

"He's a doctor!" she exclaimed incredulously, as if that explained the man's odd behaviour. "Besides, if we don't trust him, how is Rude ever going to live through this?" she lowered her gaze to her feet, and for the first time that evening, Tseng noticed the dark circles under her eyes. She even swayed slightly where she stood.

"Elena, go and get some rest." He said eventually, but sighed when she looked up at him with shining eyes. "I'll wake you up if I hear anything more." He added, more gently. When she hesitated, he urged her on with a firm push in the direction of the waiting room. "Go on. That's an order." Elena nodded and retreated, wobbly-legged and yawning widely. When she was safely out of sight, he flipped his phone back open, not entirely sure yet what he was looking for, but… hadn't he locked the keypad the last time he'd used it?

Alarmed, Tseng flicked through the record of phone calls he'd made and received until he hit the bottom of the list with a jolt. "What the–?" Someone had made a call to 'Rufus Shinra's Office' – he checked his watch – eleven minutes ago. It certainly hadn't been him.

"Clyde," he growled to himself, ignoring the startled look a passing nurse gave him. "I knew there was something odd about you." He turned back to the pristine, white-walled, impossibly tidy office Clyde had emerged from, still lit warmly since the doctor had not bothered to flick the light off. "…What are you up to?"

xxx

The room Reno had been stuck in for the last three-quarters of an hour was getting to be rather boring, especially since Cloud had managed to fall asleep again, even in the awkward position he had been sitting in, with his head against the wall and with his devastated boyfriend curled up in his arms. Reno took one look at the blonde's face in the silvery half-light, serene and without the usual light frown that always drove him up the wall, and decided he didn't have the heart to wake him. Instead he took solace in the fact that Cloud was there in the first place, trying (and failing miserably) to follow his example and get some sleep himself. Unfortunately, with boredom came the inevitable – he soon found his thoughts wandering back to Rude.

When Tseng and Elena had brought the news of Rude's condition, Reno had the impression that time would stop, or the planet would stop turning, or there would be at least a flash of lightning, or something.

In truth, nothing had changed. The lights in his room were still off, the emergency room was still full of people, the receptionist was still a bitch… and Rude was being wheeled into surgery, probably not even aware that he was in the hospital.

Reno wondered broodingly how the world could carry on as normal when it was possible that soon Rude would be taken out of it, not really caring whether he was being reasonable or not. 'Reason' can go fuck itself, he decided, if 'reason' decreed that his best friend could dash his brains out and everyone else could live their lives like nothing had happened.

Somewhere along the hallway, a little boy was crying for his mother, the sound echoing forlornly through the corridor and mingling with the distant clamour of the rest of the hospital. Reno had tried to block out the noise. He'd even gone so far as to clamp his hands over his ears. There had to be nurses out there; why didn't they shut the damn kid up? Faint snatches of conversation leaked through the thin walls of the room from next door, along with a television show that abused the corny canned laughter sound effect far too much. Outside, cars and ambulances came and went, their headlights making the tarmac shimmer with orange light.

Maybe somewhere else in the hospital there were even babies being born.

An icy panic had gripped Reno as it occurred to him that maybe Rude's life would end the moment a new one began, but when he had clutched Cloud's arm in a vice-like grip and shaken him roughly awake, the blonde had just smiled gently and pointed out that babies were born every second, and that this was no maternity hospital anyway.

Reno couldn't shake off the feeling, though, and had he been capable of tracking all of the pregnant women in Edge and forbid them to go into labour until Rude had recovered, he would have done so in a heartbeat.

Outside, the rain started and stopped erratically, and Reno's mood changed accordingly. Between Cloud's alternating attempts to get him to either go to sleep – not that _he_ had any trouble with that, the goddamn chocobo head – or eat something, and every time he jumped at the sound of footsteps outside the door, Reno's nerves were becoming dangerously brittle. When the door suddenly swung open, the light-switch snapped on and Doctor Stoke walked in with a kindly, somewhat strained smile and a slice of chocolate cake from the canteen, he nearly bowled her over as she entered.

"Easy there!" she placed the canteen tray down on the bedside table and smiled apologetically at Cloud, who had jolted awake as soon as the lights flickered on. "I thought you might be hungry, since you've been here for hours. I didn't know if you wanted anything –" this last remark was directed at Cloud "– but I can get something from the cafeteria." Cloud just shook his head and sat up properly, rubbing his eyes, apparently too groggy to form a coherent sentence. Reno barely noticed any of this, though.

"How's Rude?" he demanded, hopping absently from one foot to the other. The smile on Doctor Stoke's face strained even more.

"Well, surgery just started, and that can take anywhere from three to eight hours," she said falteringly. "He has a broken wrist, some fractured ribs, and you've probably already figured out that he has pretty serious head injuries. But Doctor Clyde – he's our best surgeon – is quite confident that he'll be ok after the operation."

"You sure?"

"Quite sure," Leila assured him – though her smile still did not quite reach her eyes. "The best thing you can do now is to rest up so you can go visit him when he wakes up."

"She's right," Cloud remarked once the white-coated woman had finished bustling around the room and checking up on Reno – a process that involved shining a bright torch into his eyes, much to the TURK's dismay. Reno just grimaced and flicked the light off once more, blinking rapidly to get rid of the dark spots from his vision. A moment later, Cloud was by his side and had wrapped the slender man in a tight hug.

"What's that for?" he squeaked. Cloud squinted through the sudden darkness.

"I thought you were crying," he explained eventually, heat rising in his cheeks. He blinked as something hot and wet trickled down his neck, only to realise Reno had buried his face in it. He _was_ crying.

"You didn't have to come tonight, you know," Reno muttered thickly. "All I've done is keep you awake and cry all over you." Cloud chuckled softly in return.

"Well, someone has to keep you out of the doctors' hair." He kissed the lithe man in his arms gently, once on his temple, brushing aside stray strands of hair that had fallen loose of his perpetually scratched, smeary goggles with his fingers, and again on the mouth. Pale fingers twisted themselves in his shirt as Reno pressed closer, the tears drying on his cheeks.

They broke apart when Reno's stomach suddenly growled, and the redhead grimaced sheepishly despite his sore red eyes.

"Actually, that cake looks pretty good right about now," he admitted, and Cloud smiled gently as he retreated back to the bed.

"When did you last eat?" the blonde wondered aloud, reclining back against the wall with his arms folded behind his head, watching as Reno took a bite. "Wait, let me guess. Breakfast, right?" Reno chewed thoughtfully for a moment.

"Nah." He mumbled unintelligibly, his mouth full. "I skipped breakfast." Cloud stared at him for a moment, eyes wide.

"Reno." The redhead swallowed and took another hasty bite before turning around.

"Yeah?"

"You're an idiot."

xxx

Rude's lifeless form was lit from above with blinding white light, while shadows in the darkened room around him shifted and warped as the surgeons set about preparing themselves for the arduous task ahead. The sharp tang of disinfectant hung in the air in the same way musk permeates a brothel, but they barely noticed, too focused on their task to bother with such a minor distraction.

"Pass me that scalpel." Doctor Clyde's voice was partially muffled behind the surgical mask stretched over his face as he stretched out a sticky, gloved hand. The man opposite him passed over the razor-sharp instrument carefully, then went back to monitoring the various screens monitoring Rude's pulse and breathing patterns.

"He's in pretty bad nick. Where'd you say they found him again?" he enquired absently, his eyes never leaving the monitors.

"Some old codger dragged him in off the street – found him in a collapsed building, believe it or not," Clyde replied through gritted teeth as he continued to operate. He straightened up again a moment later to exhale noisily. "Did you know he's a TURK?" the shorter man spun around, eyes wide, the monitors momentarily forgotten in his surprise.

"From ShinRa?"

"That's right. The old man mentioned something about a 'reward' of some kind for bringing him in. _Typical_." One of the scrubs on the other side of the operating table scoffed lightly.

"He's setting himself up for disappointment there. Selfish sonuvagun _Shinra_ wouldn't part with a single Gil 'less he was spending it on himself," she sneered. Although her mask covered most of her face, the contempt in her voice was unmistakable. "No-one gets rewarded fer nothin' these days," she sighed as she turned back to the task at hand.

"That's just the way of the world, my dear." Clyde chuckled darkly as he probed further into his patient's skull. "If you really want something from someone, you have to give them a little incentive."

"Well, I think you're both just cynics." The other doctor sniffed as he turned back to his monitors. "Shinra's turned over a new leaf, right? The old fulla'll get what's coming to him."

"Yes." Clyde muttered soberly to himself in agreement, then quietly so the others would not overhear – "He certainly will."

The moon was sinking well on its way back towards the horizon by the time surgery was over. When Doctor Clyde finally managed to escape from Elena (who tearfully thanked him over and over in a trembling voice, hands clasped together in a prayer-like gesture. Tseng was nowhere to be found, as Rufus Shinra had hinted.), the faint glow of dawn had appeared around the edges of the night sky, the stars fading into a blue-grey haze. Even the edge seemed to have been taken off the chill of the night air by the faintest rays of sunlight creeping over the city. One by one, the streetlamps flicked off, although the floodlights remained on, the edges of the crisp white light they produced faded and becoming indistinguishable between the daylight as time went on.

Doctor Clyde's shadow stretched and elongated as he crossed the helipad, passing by the now solitary Shinra helicopter with a kind of cold, silent acknowledgement. So Tseng had returned to the Shinra headquarters after all. Perfect.

A slightly shorter, stouter shadow appeared beside his own as Albie caught up with him, wheezing heavy, tobacco-laced breaths.

"Why've you dragged me all the way out here, eh?" he panted, and promptly doubled over with his hands on his knees. The doctor rolled his eyes.

"I already told you. Shinra's president will be here soon to give us our rewards."

"You mean _my_ reward. If it weren't for me, he'd still be stuck under all that rubble," Albie stated matter-of-factly. Clyde's lip curled.

"I'm sure the five-hour long emergency brain surgery I just performed was totally unnecessary then, wasn't it?" he sneered. Albie shrugged, smiling his yellow-toothed leer and picking absently at the scabs on his elbows.

"Still, the president 'imself, eh?" he was muttering in wonderment. "Cor. That bloke I dragged in must be someone important, then." He rubbed his hands together, eyes gleaming in anticipation. Clyde could have groaned with disgust. "I guess that'll make me a bit of a hero, won't i-_aagh_!" his rambling monologue was cut short as he felt something hard connect squarely with the back of his skull. He landed heavily on the hard, damp ground. Black spots dancing before his eyes, he struggled to sit upright, only to have a foot planted heavily on his ribcage. Something cracked ominously, and a red-hot pain seized him. When his vision finally returned, he found himself staring down the barrel of a gun, held by the doctor himself. "W-wait! What're you-?" he just managed to gasp out, before falling back again, the effort of trying to struggle upright too much.

"You _imbecile_. Do you _really_ think I'd let you take _my_ reward for saving that man's life?" he twisted his foot sharply to emphasize the words. Albie's eyes widened blindly as realisation hit him harder than any blow Clyde landed on him could.

"You mean…"

"The way of the world, my friend." the doctor continued, gesturing with his hands to an invisible audience. "Never expect something in return for ANY selfless act you do. Why do you think I became a doctor? To _help_ people? To save lives?" Albie just lay there, wheezing helplessly as the taller man scoffed. "I've worked at this hospital for nearly twenty-five years, and all I have to show for it is my own office and respect. _Respect_!" he laughed harshly, his tone bordering on that of someone demented. "Respect doesn't pay the bills, does it? Not that you'd know anything about THAT." He glared down at the man beneath his foot for a moment, then shrugged and carried on.

"Then suddenly you turned up, babbling some nonsense about becoming a hero and getting _rewarded_ for your efforts… well, that got me thinking – in fact, I've been thinking about it for the last five _hours, _while I was busy saving that man's _life_." He spitefully jabbed his foot into Albie's chest once more. "I'm going to kill you," he announced calmly. "And then I'm going to take my money – don't worry, I've already negotiated with our _dear_ friend President Shinra. I'd ask if you had any last words you'd like me to relay to your loved ones, but… well. I doubt anyone will miss you."

"You wouldn't dare." Albie's gravely voice faltered uncertainly. "What if someone sees?" the taller man smirked as he glanced around slowly, purposefully. The clamour that had filled the area only a few hours before had faded along with the darkness, and now an almost eerie stillness had fallen on the outside of the hospital. A cold, clammy mist crept around the edges of the helipad, thick as clouds and certainly nigh impossible to see through from a distance. Albie stared in terror up the barrel of the gun. Despite the sudden chill, sweat rolled down the grimy man's forehead.

"Excellent timing, wouldn't you say?" the doctor chuckled darkly, his voice dripping with malice. Albie swallowed loudly, the sound lost amongst the pounding in his ears, as the Clyde gently squeezed the trigger.

The kick sent a painful jolt down Clyde's arm, and the retort echoed sharply off the stone walls around the perimeter of the hospital. A twinge of concern made him glance around, but the ever-thickening mist had almost completely obscured his view of the hospital entrance. There was no way anyone could have seen. He flicked the safety back on his gun and dropped it back into his pocket. There was blood spattered on his coat, he noted with revulsion, seeping its way into the fabric and creating angry blotches that would undoubtedly stain it beyond repair. He rolled his eyes.

"You're just a pest through and through, aren't you?" he growled, reaching for his phone and holding it to his ear "Leila." He barked, careful to maintain an appropriate amount of alarm in his voice. "Send some paramedics to the helipad NOW. A man's been shot." There was an incredulous pause from the other end. "HURRY, woman!" he snarled, and a sudden bout of scuffling indicated that the younger doctor had just leapt into action.

He dared take one last glance back down at the body lying crumpled on the tarmac, dark blood oozing from the back of his skull and pooling around him like some kind of twisted, misshapen nimbus. Albie's dull, unblinking and quite, quite blind eyes bore right into his own.

Clyde grimaced as his eyes fell on the old man's hand, curled loosely into a fist save for his index finger, which remained outstretched and pointing condemningly towards him.

xxx

A/N - Ooh, Clyde, I'd watch your ass if I were you. 'Cause karma's gonna come back to bite it.


	4. The Truth Comes Out

**Doubt**

Disclaimer – You know the drill.

So to recap – Rude's just come out of brain surgery, the surgeon just shot the hobo who brought him in, Reno, Cloud and Elena are waiting anxiously for the news and Tseng's gone back to Shinra HQ to meet with Rufus. Any questions?

**Chapter 4 – The Truth Comes Out**

The hallways of the Shinra building were oddly empty at this time of the morning, and although Tseng could have sworn he heard the faint whistle of the janitor at work, the old man was nowhere to be seen. The glass windows of the offices around him reflected the ceiling lights, and his footsteps echoed forlornly on the polished floor. He was suddenly reminded of the hospital - he shuddered slightly and quickened his pace as he carried on in the direction of the elevator, straightening the cuffs on his shirt as he went.  
Rufus Shinra's back was turned towards the doorway when the Tseng stepped into his office. His gaze was instead directed towards the rear window, which overlooked the twisted remains of what was once Midgar – a constant reminder of what had befallen his father's empire.

"Sir." Tseng stood stiffly at attention. Rufus started, even though he had undoubtedly heard the TURK enter – Tseng wondered briefly what the president had been thinking so intently of, to have forgotten his surroundings so.

"Does the name 'Clyde' sound familiar to you, Tseng?" he said as he turned away from the window, brow still furrowed in concentration.

"The surgeon who performed Rude's surgery," came the passive reply. Rufus shook his blond head and approached his desk.

"No, I know. I can't help but think I've heard that name somewhere before, though. Not long ago, in fact."

"Maybe there has been a 'Clyde' working here at some point, sir," Tseng offered patiently, stepping further into the room, polished shoes sinking into the soft carpet underfoot.

"Yes, that's probably it. I suppose I'll have to look through the company records," Rufus gave a tired sigh and lowered himself into his chair. "Have a seat, Tseng. You look exhausted." Quite taken aback by this, Tseng gratefully nodded and sat down stiffly in the chair opposite his boss. Unsure what to do with his hands, he placed them neatly in his lap instead. His muscles twinged in protest, but he resisted the urge to slump back with a great sigh of relief as he would have liked, instead opting to remain straight-backed and sober as he had when he had been standing in the doorway. He was sure that, for a moment, he caught a ghost of an exasperated grimace tug at the President's face, but when he blinked and looked again, it had disappeared. He was so tired though, having been awake for nearly twenty-two hours straight, he was probably seeing things.  
"He called me using your cell phone, you know," Rufus remarked mildly out of the blue, when the silence between them began to border on awkward. Tseng snapped back to attention, furious with himself for having forgotten this.

"Yes si–" he began, but Rufus cut him off with a wave of his hand, leaving the older man somewhat bewildered.

"Don't worry about that now. I have something important to tell you," he continued, unfazed.  
And so the president repeated all that Doctor Clyde had told him, from his knowledge of the supposedly company-secret affairs of the TURKs to the threat he had made against Rude's survival. Throughout the tale, Tseng's face grew paler, and his lips drew together into a tight, hard line and his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. He sat there, with rage simmering in the pit of his stomach, until Rufus had finished talking and looked at the Wutaian man expectantly, waiting for his response.

"Are you going to send the money?" Tseng forced out through gritted teeth.

"Of course not," declared Rufus, as if the idea were as preposterous as blackmailing the richest man on the planet. "Scum like that don't deserve a single gil. Still, you have a right to know exactly what is going on." He lowered his voice instinctively, although there was no way anyone could overhear the conversation. "I'd appreciate it if you could keep this between the two of us, especially while Rude is still hospitalized. The last thing I need now is for Reno to end up getting arrested for assault, or worse." Tseng nodded his understanding, although the movement was purely mechanical. "Very well. You're dismissed."

"Sir?"

"Go home, Tseng. Get some rest. Or go back to the hospital – it's not really any of my business to tell you what to do when you're off-duty. Take tomorrow off and recuperate. I'll have Reno and Elena do the same." The blond man stood up slowly, and Tseng hastily followed suit.

"What will you do?" he enquired, allowing this lapse in formality since he was no longer technically at work. Rufus' lips twisted into a wry half-smile.

"I'm_ always_ on duty."

xxx

"Ya think he's asleep, or just out of it?" Reno's voice was hoarse from lack of sleep, but no-one commented on it. In the room Rude was being kept in, he wouldn't have been able to raise his voice anyway. With The TURKs and Cloud all cramped around the metal-framed bed, there was barely any room to move, and so they remained still and silent, save for occasional, disjointed fragments of conversation.  
Rude looked oddly small with the bed sheets tucked tightly around him and his head all wound up with crisp white bandages. An alien-like mask covered most of his face, and if Reno listened closely, he could hear his friend's raspy breathing. The sound, though obviously Rude was in a bad way, was oddly reassuring. As long as he kept breathing, he would be ok – to Reno, at least, this seemed reasonable.

"I don't know." Elena's reply was automatic, even a little robotic. "…a bit of both, I guess," she added after a moment's thought. Reno said nothing more, instead returning to watching Rude's chest rising and falling under the bedcovers, unconsciously holding his own breath in order to listen. Minutes passed, and eventually it was Doctor Stoke who broke the silence next as she bustled through the door.

"Alright people, time to go. You need to rest – especially you, Red. You look awful," she informed them bluntly. Reno just scoffed half-heartedly.

"Pfft, what're you talking about? I always look good," he barely mustered enough energy to protest as Cloud placed a firm hand on his shoulder and propelled him from the room. Elena followed, close on their heels and carrying her high-heeled shoes in one hand, far too exhausted to walk properly with them on. The young doctor smiled kindly as she pushed the door to after them, careful not to let it slip until she was sure they had gone and she had turned back to the lifeless man lying a few feet away.

"Your friends miss you. You'd better wake up soon," she remarked mildly as she went about the room, first checking Rude's pulse and then the monitors around him, her movements practiced, almost mechanical from years of practice. "You know, if I had friends like yours I'd make damn sure I recovered from that coma," she went on, tongue between her teeth as she penned in the information on her clipboard in neat, loopy handwriting. "Honestly though – what could possibly be so important to Shinra that he'd send you people out in the middle of the night… especially to a place like that? I guess it's just one of those mysteries."  
Distracted by her own rambling, she finished the word she was writing with a flourish, and then hastily reached for her correction pen.  
The pocket of her lab coat suddenly buzzed, and without even pausing, she reached down and flipped it open.

"How is the patient?" Doctor Clyde's brusque voice demanded in her ear. Leila grimaced.

"He's stable, at least, though he hasn't moved at all since surgery ended." There was a long pause from the other end. Where most other doctors would say something reassuring for her to relay back to the patient's anxious friends and family, Cornelius Clyde preferred to 'not raise their hopes up', as he always said. "Er, so the man you found, how is he?" Leila enquired, to break the awkward silence, absently flipping her pen between her fingers.

"Dead," came the curt reply. "The shot to his head was fatal. There was nothing the medics could do." The pen flipped neatly over the table and landed with a clatter on the floor as Leila let go of it in shock.

"Gaia… what kind of monster would do something like that?" she wondered aloud as she bent over to retrieve it.

"Call me if the patient wakes up," was Clyde's only reply before hanging up.

xxx

Tseng strode determinedly towards the hospital entrance, wearier than ever, but spurred on by the deep-seated wrath boiling in the pit of his stomach. His car beeped as if in farewell when he reached over his shoulder to lock it with the button on his key. The shiny black company vehicle looked more than a little out of place alongside Cloud's abandoned fenrir, but just as the delivery boy had been in a hurry to find Reno, Tseng had no time to waste.  
The receptionist – a different woman to the one who had had the misfortune of encountering Reno earlier, looked up with a polite smile at Tseng's approach, but it soon faded as the Wutaian man swept past her, through the double glass doors at the far end of the room and down the corridor to where he knew Clyde's office was.

The room was indistinguishable from the other rooms along the hallway unless you knew exactly where you were going. Someone had drawn the blinds over the windows, and when he reached out and sharply twisted the doorknob, the door remained obstinately shut. Refusing to be thwarted by something so trivial, Tseng scowled at his reflection and rapped on the glass. Still no reply came from within, and Tseng was about to try again when someone tapped him on the shoulder from behind.

"Can I help yo- oh, you're a friend of Rude's, aren't you?" behind him stood a blonde woman with a clipboard tucked under her arm.

"I need to find Clyde."

"Oh, maybe he's checking on Rude. The room's down that corridor and on your left. Uh, is everything ok?" Ignoring the question, Tseng just nodded curtly in thanks and stalked off in the direction the doctor had pointed out for him.  
Leila frowned and pursed her lips as she watched the TURK's retreating back.

"Why do I never know what's going on?" she groaned, and jabbed her key into the office door. It swung open, the blinds over the glass window rattling as she pushed it roughly closed behind her.  
'_That's because you're just a doctor. Your job is to fix people, not poke your nose into other people's business,_' she told herself, but the stern advice only served to conjure up images of Doctor Clyde scowling patronisingly down at her. "Alright, Leila, stop feeling sorry for yourself," she muttered out loud, and went to place her clipboard, along with its attached notes, onto the Doctor's desk so she could finally go home.

Clyde's lab coat, spattered with drying blood from his encounter with the dying man outside the hospital, had been draped limply over the back of his chair. Leila stuck her tongue out in revulsion – obviously the man had been too busy to even drop it down into the laundry. She hooked a finger under the collar and held it out at arms' length.  
"I can take it down, I guess," she murmured with a shrug. She started towards the door, but a metallic _'clink'_ from the coat pocket made her pause and glance downwards. "_Bullet cases_?"She gasped, as she withdrew the metallic objects and held them up for closer inspection. They glinted wickedly under the electric ceiling lights.  
A chill suddenly ran down the young doctor's spine as realisation dawned in the back of her mind. "No… he wouldn't…" her distorted reflection in Clyde's office door stared back at her, mouthing the words as she said them. Leila tossed the little metal cylinders aside, along with the soiled lab coat, and turned this way and that, eyes scanning the room until they finally fell upon what she was searching for.  
The black box was inconspicuously placed next to the waste paper basket. Before she even realised what she was doing, she had fallen to her knees in front of it. It was locked, but Clyde had left the key in the padlock. Leila's pale hands trembled as she pushed open the lid, and she felt the blood drain from her face when she recognised the unmistakeable outline of a gun in the padding inside.

"_Tut tut_, Miss Stoke." The young doctor jumped as the office door swung open to reveal Clyde, sans lab coat and not looking particularly surprised to see his junior colleague hunched over his gun case. "Snooping through my belongings, and," he glanced down to where his stained lab coat lay rumpled on the floor, "not taking very good care with them at all. How unprofessional." He stepped further into the office, taking care to shut the door firmly behind him.

"What have you done?" Doctor Stoke's voice wavered - the dangerous glint in the older man's eyes made her swallow nervously. "Did you kill him?" There was no need to state who. Clyde's eyes narrowed.

"Yes." Taken aback by Clyde's blunt answer, Doctor Stoke fell quiet, shuffling her feet and finding herself not quite able to look her superior in the eyes.

"Are you going to kill me?" she mumbled, and Clyde barked a bitter, harsh laugh that sent a chill down her spine.

"Not if you do as you're told. In a couple of hours this will all be over, and you can go back to handing out potions and bandaging up drunks," he answered coldly. "Keep quiet about our little _discussion_, and make sure you give this to our bald TURK friend, _before_ he wakes up." He produced an ampoule of something clear from the drawer of his desk and pressed it into her hand. She stared down at it in dismay. Though there was no label, she had a feeling it was not simply tap water.

"This could kill him," she said flatly, as though she were a medical student reciting from a textbook. "And what if I refuse?" she added, emboldened by the thought of putting her patient in danger. She abruptly drew back as the older man casually withdrew his gun from the desk drawer.

"I'm afraid that's not an option, Miss Stoke."

"But he's just come out of surgery!" Leila protested, but was cut off as Clyde slammed his fist down upon the polished surface of his desk, sending several papers wafting, unheeded, onto the floor.

"Then I suggest you do your job and keep an eye on him!" he snarled. Behind his grey eyes and tightly clenched jaw, he seemed more beast than man. _'Like a Nibel Wolf,'_ Doctor Stoke thought with a shudder. Then, _'Gods, I should have just gone home while I had the chance.'_

Suddenly, more than anything in the world, all she wanted to do was to put as much space between her and the furious surgeon as possible.

When Leila finally reached Rude's room, despite the feeling that she had just stepped through into a nightmare, she had almost managed to steel herself for the task Clyde had given her.

To her relief and dismay, Tseng was still there, leaning against the windowsill and obviously fighting to stay alert despite his drooping eyelids. When she saw Rude, still unconscious and trapped under a layer of blankets, her resolve nearly crumbled altogether. Even so, she forced herself onwards, wearing a smile that felt more like a grimace and probably looked more like some kind of muscle spasm.

"Clyde did not turn up," remarked the Wutaian man curtly, and she inwardly winced with guilt.

"Yes, he has to, ah, attend to something." An awkward silence filled the room. "Uhm, was it something important?" she enquired tentatively.

"It can wait," came the sullen reply, and she nodded, biting her tongue. There was more to Doctor Clyde's wrongdoing than just a dead homeless man, but somehow it involved Rude and the TURKs too. Guns and TURKs were definitely a dangerous combination, especially when they were not necessarily on your side.

Doctor Stoke mulled this over as she prepared a syringe. With each passing second, her hands grew sweatier and shakier, until she could barely hold the syringe steady. Though her back was turned to the TURK by the window, her face burned with shame. Was he watching her every move? Maybe wondering what she was doing? What if Rude reacted badly to the shot? Leila flinched. The idea of being killed by one of Shinra's employees was just as unappealing as being killed by Clyde himself.

'_I should just come clean now.' _She decided, staring dully at the assembled needle. So lost in thought she was, it took a moment for her to realise that her cell phone was buzzing in the pocket of her lab coat. Someone had left her a voicemail – she had no doubts as to who it was.

"_Miss Stoke, I may or may not have forgotten to inform you that if you intend on revealing our little transgressions to anyone, I doubt anyone would believe you." _Clyde'svoice sneered through the receiver. "_I also have a letter from your psychiatrist friend – what's his name? Doctor Rowan? – detailing your recent therapy sessions. I'd so hate to have to pronounce you unfit for work on the grounds of simple_ paranoia. _All it needs is my signature, Miss Stoke. Bear that in mind_."

While the intention of the message was to terrorise her into silence, instead Leila, who had never been to a therapy session in her life, felt something inside her snap. Shards of glass skittered across the tiled floor as she tossed the syringe aside – she would worry about malpractice charges later – and Tseng turned to her in surprise. Before he could speak, the young doctor was standing before him, jaw clenched in determination.

"Sir, there's something you need to know," she began quietly.

xxx

Damn OCs and their squabbles. God forbid any of the canon characters get a few pages to themselves.


End file.
